


Honesty

by theclockiscomplete



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Suicidal Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 02:46:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5691673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclockiscomplete/pseuds/theclockiscomplete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set immediately after "Last Christmas." Neither of them will admit they're addicted to each other, but they've both been through the withdrawal and the effects can't go unaddressed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honesty

**Author's Note:**

> I submitted this as a prompt to a writer I trust more with it, but I am also impatient and so I gave it a shot. I just remember watching Clara snuggle up to Santa Claus instead of waking up and it hit me hard. Frankly, I was waiting for someone to address it in s9, but it never came except maybe when she said "maybe I've been heading for this all along. Maybe that's why I took all those risks." (Paraphrasing). Anyway. Angst, fade to black sex, and then realistic cuddling, thanks to my cuddle beta gingerjay, who has actually experienced the phenomenon and offered her expertise.

The Doctor had less than a second to throw them into the vortex before Clara’s hands fisted in his hoodie to bring his mouth crashing onto hers. He’d been expecting it, sure, but he’d also been hoping for some time to stammer a disclaimer. Something like  _ Sorry, it’s been nearly a millennium and not in this body _ or  _ help.  _ He needn’t have worried though. Clara knew. She always knew. He threaded a hand through her hair and felt like weeping at the restored contact. It had been previous him’s favorite thing and he’d almost forgotten the feel of it slipping between his fingers. He’d had a question, he remembered, but blast if he could remember what it was with Clara’s tongue sending electric shocks through his. It’d been important. Not just barely related to their latest adventure, either. She backed him against the console and ground into him—he decided it could probably wait. He did his best to kiss her with the same intensity and tried not to think about how bad he was at this, what he must look like. If was anything close to the way he was currently sounding…

 

Clara drew back, panting for breath. “You,” she wiped her mouth. “Are thinking way too much.”

 

“Guilty.” His voice came out all funny and his knees felt like jelly. He gripped the console and leaned against it’s cool metal for support. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d mastered circle breathing.”

 

“What?”

 

Explaining things was familiar territory; his hand waved of its own accord as he explained between gasps. “Circle breathing,” he began. “Breathing in through your nose while breathing out through your—” This time she straddled him, pinned him with her hips against the console, and snogged him senseless. A faint, sparking part of the doctor’s mind prompted him to lock the controls and then there was only Clara. His hands flush against her spine, a lever poking him in the shoulder, and a stirring in the vicinity of his hips that was all at once foreign and very familiar. This body did not like sex by design. But this body was made for Clara and it was made for making things right, and he’d almost lost the chance for both so fuck normal. It was what they did. 

 

The nagging feeling returned more insistently, but it wasn’t until they were running down the hall, fingers intertwined, that it hit him. He skidded to a stop almost on the spot, and Clara yelped as her momentum nearly pitched her to the floor. She turned on him. “Doctor?” 

 

Stars above, she was beautiful. Hair mussed—by him. Lips wet and swollen—from him. Chest heaving, dressing-gown skewed—because of him. Warm. Alive. He tried to swallow the knot in his throat. Her face did the thing with the eyes. “Doctor, am I misunderstanding?” What? Oh.

 

He squeezed Clara’s hand tighter and tugged her toward him. When she was close enough, he drew her into a wordless hug. He knew they were both acutely aware of his half-erection between them, but as reassuring as he knew it was, the evidence of his arousal wasn’t the point. “Clara,” he murmured into her hair. “Clara, Clara, Clara. My Clara.” He took a deep breath. “You didn’t want to wake up.”

 

Clara wiggled free and looked up at him. He couldn’t be sure, but her face spoke something of a feeling of betrayal. He began to question the wisdom of broaching this subject so soon. “Can we not do this right now?” she asked.

 

He cleared his throat, and the sound of his foot scraping across the floor below seemed to echo. “It’s important.” They stared at each other for a long moment.

 

“Fine,” she said defiantly. She crossed her arms and looked away. “No. I didn’t want to.” He felt his hearts twist in his chest. What had she been through while he was away? What had his lies cost her?

 

“Clara.” he moved towards her and she backed away with a hand up.

 

“No,” she said. “You wanted this. You are going to stand where I can see your face.” He wasn’t sure if he imagined the tremor in her voice. “I failed Danny,” she continued. “I lied to him. I broke his heart. All he ever wanted from me was the truth and I—” she took a deep breath. “All I know to do is lie when it comes to you. I may not have killed him, but I destroyed Danny Pink.”

 

This wasn’t making sense yet. “He chose not to come back, Clara.”

 

“I know that.” Her voice was flat. “He chose his promise, and it wasn’t to me. And that’s fine.” Her eyes were shiny when they met his. “I didn’t deserve him to come back. I can’t even say that if he did, I would be able to give him what he wanted.” The Doctor’s mouth was dry. Here they were, day one of honesty and there’d already been more confessing than the entirety of their time spent together before. If this was any indication of their new arrangement, it was going to kill him before it was all over. He held out his hand. Clara eyed it with her arms still wrapped around herself. Finally, she took it and he was relieved to see some of the tension go out of her shoulders. The walked together down the hall, in no hurry.

 

“There was this planet,” he began. “Small. Sparsely populated. Going to be destroyed. War-ravaged, starving, broken…”

 

“Just your kind of thing to save.” There was a small smile in Clara’s voice.

 

“To try, anyway.” He fell silent; they kept walking. “It was a fixed point,” he continued after a minute. “The planet’s destruction would lead to the formation of a cluster of galaxies devoted to peace. To preserving billions of lives.”

 

“So you saved them,” Clara said. “Let’s not pretend this is hypothetical. Honesty, remember? I know how this goes. You let the planet be destroyed but you saved the people.” She waved a hand. “Creatures. Sentient life-forms, whatever.”

 

He could physically feel his steps growing heavier. Honesty, he told himself. “They wouldn’t come.”

 

Clara looked up at him. “But you feel guilty anyway.” She wasn’t getting it yet, he realized. How this story tied into hers. He could hardly blame her; it wasn’t often that he spoke about the same thing she did. “Doctor,” she said, mirroring his own words, “they made their choice.”

 

The Doctor hesitated a moment, then took the plunge. “I stayed.”

 

“Of course you did,” she said. “Right up until the last second, I’m sure.” She looked up at him, and this smile he knew. This was the proud smile. “There was nothing you could have done.”

 

He shook his head. “No, Clara. I  _ stayed.  _ If the TARDIS hadn’t activated the catastrophe defense…”

 

She stopped walking. He took a deep breath; it took all of his will to turn and look at her. Her hand was a vice on his, like she was reassuring herself that he was really here and not—oh. Shit.

 

“We’re not dreaming,” he added hurriedly. “That was a terrible oversight on my part. I wasn’t trying to distort your idea of reality—”

 

“You stupid man.” There was a definite shake in her words, but he could not for the life of him figure out if it was from sadness or rage. She was wearing the same face she’d had on the moon before she’d told him to leave, to go far away...rage, then. He’d blown it again. “What the hell were you thinking?” she whispered. “You just…rolled over to die?” She stepped forward and hit him once, on the shoulder. He felt it in his hearts.

 

“Clara—”

 

“No you shut up,” she said. “I know exactly what you are going to say, and no it’s  _ not _ the same for me. I. Am. Human. Human, Doctor. That comes with some limitations I can accept, and some that I don’t have to because of you.” She backed him up until he was flush against the wall—no, a door. He stared down at her, and something in his face must have reached her because hers softened. Just a little. She got it now, he could see. She reached for his face with a hand that was too small to be a part of someone so large and placed it on his cheek. He tried not to flinch; she noticed anyway. She pulled him down and kissed him softly on the mouth. “Listen,” she said a moment later. “My insignificance in this big old space is what allows me to be reckless. If I die tomorrow or in 62 years, it will all be the same. No,” she said, silencing him. “It will, Doctor. I’m not the one who’s meant to save the universe over and over. A few times, sure. I’ll give it my best—show you how it’s done.” She smiled and stroked his cheek with a thumb. “But the rest of the time?” Her face grew serious. “The rest of the time, I’m here to keep the man who is the Doctor in line. With five minute breaks.”

 

The Doctor swallowed and was surprised to find his eyes wet. “Yes boss.” His voice was a rasp.

 

“Now.” She reached behind him and turned the handle of the door he was pressed against. “We are going in here, and we are going to kiss like real people do. We are going to have sex like real people do. And later, when we are ready and not a moment before, we will go and save a planet. We will be the Doctor and Clara.”

 

“Who are we now?” he managed as she led him inside.

 

The door whispered shut behind them, leaving them illuminated by the light of the softly shimmering nebula above. Clara shrugged out of her dressing gown and reached for the zipper of the Doctor’s hoodie. She eased it down and placed a palm flat against his chest. “Right now,” she said, “we’re nobody.”

This time there was nothing to distract him from the electric sensation in his brain when their lips met. This time he did not hesitate to crush her to him, followed her nudging until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the bed and they collapsed. Clara braced her knees against his hips and worked his hoodie off of him before pulling his shirt up and kissing a sloppy trail from his sternum down to the waistband of his trousers. He hadn’t even known that he could make some of the noises she was eliciting from him; the wet heat of her mouth and the weight of her body anchoring him to the bed gave him the sense that while they were here in this moment, there was nothing he had to be but hers. Nobody, indeed, and perfectly so. He managed to get the shirt over his head and tossed it in the general vicinity of a corner, hissing when her teeth scraped over a nipple. Her tongue chased and soothed the pain/pleasure before she sat up and wiggled her way out of her pyjamas and underwear, kicking them off the edge of the bed. The Doctor moved to do the same, but she stilled his hands. 

 

“Leave them to me,” she said. He nodded and she released his hands before squirming back to sit on his thighs. He wondered if he would regenerate on the spot. A moment of fumbling, and then his belt and fly were undone. He lifted his hips and she shed the pants slowly, kissing from his hip down to the top of a knobby knee before tugging them the rest of the way off and crawling back up over him. 

 

She grasped his length and tugged very gently, and his hips bucked shamelessly against her as something like a whimper escaped him. There was no need to suck him to full mast; he was already achingly hard and as likely as any technical virgin to fire too soon. That was okay. She suddenly paused, frowning. The Doctor partially sat up, half-glaring but too far gone to put real feeling into it. Clara squeezed very gently to emphasize precisely what was the problem. “Do I need to worry about a condom?” The Doctor groaned and thrusted against her, eyes rolling half in annoyance and half in pleasure. He made a noise that came out roughly like “guh.” Clara trailed a finger down his ribcage with a smile. “Sorry, what was that?” This time when he raised his head and tried to glare at her, she took pity on him.

*****************************************

“Wow,” Clara said when they had caught their breath and the Doctor was sprawled across her like some kind of vaguely damp, thoroughly debauched stick insect. Her voice was muffled by his arm over her face. “You don’t do ‘physical’ by halves when you decide to jump in, do you?” The Doctor grunted and nuzzled his face deeper into the crook of her neck. His hair tickled her cheek and she was reasonably certain his knee had cut off all circulation in the inside of her thigh. She unstuck her arm from under his waist and moved it up so she could run her fingers through his hair, scratching his scalp as she went. He hummed into her neck and she giggled and squirmed away. He pouted at her, eyes half-shut in sleepiness and petulance. 

 

“Good pillows don’t move,” he muttered.

 

She tugged a little harder on the tuft of hair between her fingers. “I am the best pillow, mister.”

 

“Yes ma’am.” By the mercy of whatever god was responsible for post-coital snuggles, his knee finally moved from its sharp protrusion into her thigh and she sighed in relief. It was awkward and a bit too warm and she wasn’t sure her right breast was going to come unstuck from his chest without some serious cajoling, but with the double beat of his hearts lulling her into sleep and his breath cool against her jaw, Clara thought that just maybe, it was worth it.

  
  



End file.
